when it alteration finds
by Regency
Summary: Post-THORS. He's still her Doctor, but sometimes with this new face he worries she may not be his River anymore. River sets him straight. (It's called marriage, honey.)


Author: Regency

Title: when it alteration finds

Pairing: River Song/The Twelfth Doctor

Rating: PG/Teen

Warnings: None

Summary: He's still her Doctor, but sometimes with this new face he worries she may not be his River anymore. River sets him straight. _(It's called marriage, honey.)_

Author's Notes: Feel free to flail with me on Tumblr at sententiousandbellicose.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from Doctor Who. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

* * *

 _Let me not to the marriage of true minds  
Admit impediments. Love is not love  
Which alters when it alteration finds [...]_

 _-Sonnet 116,_ William Shakespeare

* * *

Anyone would be challenged to decide which of them sleeps less: the Time Lord who needs little or the reformed child soldier trained to need none. Suffice it to say their bedroom receives almost no attention save for their amorous entanglements. And even those are prone to happening anywhere _but_ the bedroom. When you have a boundless spaceship at your disposal, you don't limit yourselves to conventional horizontal surfaces.

Or any surfaces, really. The zero-gravity room has been very busy lately, the Doctor is unashamed to admit. That's now his second favorite room after the console room where the action really happens.

There, River has taken his jump seat for her throne. Whenever the Doctor finds himself in the console room, she's sure to be present, reading her age old tomes, some of them liberated from culturally significant sites she scarpered to when bored, and some from Luna University's renowned libraries (he never accompanies her there). She's writing her own, updated and corrected editions of every historical text in the known universe. _'Only the interesting ones, sweetie!'_ she'd trilled to his tremendous joy. His bespoke psychopath, a confirmed bookworm.

He spends much too long smiling soppily at her downturned head as she works. He's started to worry his face will stick that way.

* * *

The Doctor regards his reflection in the time rotor with an inchoate scowl. He's not one overly given to vanity, not in this body, but he's beginning to see his years etched on this face. Not the billions of them that must have passed him by while he quarreled with his conscience in the confessional dial. Those slither under the surface of his skin and crop up in his eyes when he forgets to barricade the doors of his memory tightly enough. This is a lesser strain, though no less wearing; this is the mere humany-wumany day by day passage of time. The slow crawl etched in laughter lines and worry trenches. He doesn't like how it looks on him. _Does River like it?_

His wife likes him, in a general sense. He knows because she routinely falls apart laughing at his commentary when they find themselves in a tight spot. She likes him as he is now, tongue biting and dry, matter of fact, witty. There's a spot on his coat the feels ever so slightly worn from her hiding her face there to stifle her giggling. _'Not the time, sweetie!'_ she laughs and laughs, and then shoots something. He loves how she trusts him enough to spare him a lingering glance when enemies threaten. _Always safe with me, wife._ She knows he would give his life (this one, anyway, a few others, easily) to preserve her last; her faith in him grows more and more unshakable with every triumph. What he doesn't know is if she loves this life of his as she loved the one that came before.

It's the face. No longer ageless, no longer youthful, he is no prize to gawk at. That isn't something that gives him much grief when he's alone. He's a man made solitary by the universe's constant theft of his companions by choice and he has the sod-off eyebrows to match. They ward off the troublesome, not to mention much of the friendly, but they're nothing against the wide-eyed, curious, and irrepressible. His smile is a legend and not always a kind one. It wards off one and all (and is often meant to). Sometimes he even thinks it wards off his wife, although he doesn't always feel that way.

Nothing can steal their chemistry, the attraction that sizzles between their bodies at an almost atomic level. Their every interaction crackles with potential energy yearning for catalysis to strike. As his suppressed memories of past regenerations unlock, he remembers a head of impossible hair, a whiff of time and violets in the air, a nun with a yen for guns and a grin to ensnare him. These memories add layers to the tapestry of their history, entwine their knotted timelines beyond sanity, rendering her indelible and unforgettable in his eyes. This is who they are.

Wherever she is, he's drawn to be. To set eyes upon her from a distance, to soak her up like ruddy sunlight through the trees, like some coldblooded ectotherm trying to persist in a freezing world. Wherever he finds himself, he need only turn his head to see her drifting in his wake at her own pace. It could be that they're horrifically, compatibly made and like seeks like. It could be love or lust or one of those other disappointing 'L' words. It could be sheer habit. One doesn't forget their spouse after hundreds of years, or even billions in the Doctor's case. River could be with him out of habit. He's not sure he wants to know the truth if that's the size of it. Let him live a lie for 24 years to persist for the rest of his days. Let him.

Some days he wants to know whether she loves this regeneration unconditionally, but most days he's happy enough just to wonder. _No use courting misery when there's lovelier company to entertain._

He is sliding his gaze away from the rose gold curls spilling over River's 'borrowed' Sumerian tablet when she flicks her eyes up from the chiseled text to look at him. They've been playing visual tag like this for...hours or weeks. The Doctor likes to pretend he could ever lose count of every moment they have to share. _Twenty-four years_ , he still thinks in giddy wonder. He should have checked sooner. _Sodding_ _Bowtie should have looked._

"Sweetie?" River's sets down her stone tablet. She groked to his worries a while back, maybe even sooner than he realized, but she's been giving him space. This is how they work, love like the art of war, assess, battle, retreat. But neither are keen to battle each other anymore; there's a universe of enemies for that.

"Thinking about doing these roots," he says. His reflection is distorted in the rotor's casing, yet the steel grey is not to be denied. _Would another color change much?_ The Doctor mulls it over, undecided.

River's fingers are suddenly in his hair, her plush front splayed across his back. He hadn't heard her coming. She moves about as silent and deadly as a panther, but she has softer hands. "You'll do no such thing. I won't hear of it."

He lolls his head back to rest in her restless palms as they smooth down his wayward waves. "You're the one who told me they needed touching up. It won't do for you to refuse to be seen with me, wife."

"And become a hermit? _Please!_ How else am I meant to show off my old fella?" She kisses his crown and he smiles despite the strain. She gives the best kisses.

"I'm no trophy husband anymore. Not with this funny old mush of mine."

"I'll have you know I'm quite attached to that funny old mush." She stands on the tips of her bare toes to plant her chin on his shoulder. The time rotor's curved surface disfigures each of them. His slender, hawkish features are lengthened to parodic proportions. Her classic beauty is unrecognizable. She's no less stunning for it.

"You sure?" He can read her scrambled features from here. A hug is just a good way to hide your face. He looks back at her.

Her brows rise in surprise and fall in agitation in the space of a blink. "Very. Why do you ask?"

"You didn't sign up for an old man when you married Bowtie. You thought you were home free before I showed up."

She arches an eyebrow at him. It alone speaks volumes as to his idiocy.

"I'm far from young in this body, Doctor. You've endless lives ahead of you and I've just this one. I'd be a prize fool to begrudge you a mature face when mine will only grow older with time and yours can always change."

She drops off the balls of her feet. She's given up on tiptoes.

"You're looking quite fresh for two hundred."

River tips a hand side to side with a becoming nose crinkle.

"Not two hundred?"

"I may have rounded."

"One hundred?"

"In the other direction."

"You're _over_ two hundred?!"

"A lady never reveals her true age," she admonishes him. "It tends to worry the locals and I've been accused of witchcraft enough to be more conservative with my vital statistics. Being roasted over an open flame once is quite enough for me, sweetie."

That story hasn't come up so far. They're still in the re-learning stage of their reunion, relating funny (sometimes traumatizing) anecdotes as the mood hits them.

He laces his fingers through hers, bringing them to rest over his hearts. "How did you get out of that fire pit, River?"

"I did what I always do, Doctor," she retorts, tone indecipherable. "I saved myself."

"It doesn't always have to be you on your own anymore. You have me."

She brushes her lips across the nape of his neck and settles her cheek against his back. "That wasn't always true, was it, my love? I'm still getting used to counting on you."

* * *

River and the Doctor resume their previous pursuits shortly thereafter, neither of them the type to devolve into long conversations about stymied affections and mortal hopes for days to come. River returns to her books that appear to have multiplied since she last saw to them and the Doctor tinkers with the TARDIS. The Old Girl even seems content to let him do so sans sparks and singed fingers. The Doctor can only assume he's met her approval. She's quite a protective mum, his TARDIS. _Nothing less than River deserves._

"250?" he inquires more from a desire to hear her voice than a real need to know. He points his sonic screwdriver at the Probability Matrix he's sure has been on the fritz for the last century, give or take a decade, and sonics a pair of orange and blue wires. The TARDIS rolls its proverbial eyes at his nonsensical task. As if she hadn't compensated for the loss of the Matrix eons from now and a thirty linear years ago and never, depending on one's relative position in space-time.

"No," River concedes while he fiddles. "Not 250." She puts down her pen to tie her hair up in a high ponytail that reminds him painfully of...He locks those mental doors all the tighter. No need for her to catch a psychic whiff of what the future has in store.

"Warm or cold?"

She cocks her her head, quizzical. "Does it matter?"

"Everything matters when it's to do with you." This loose sappy tongue of his says it loves her all the time.

River purses her lips, though her eyes are soft. "...Cold."

"299?"

She twists on the jump seat, rifling through her pile for another reference book. "Hmm. I may not have been completely honest when I said 200."

"How dishonest are we talking?"

"Not terribly. I wanted to impress you before I knew who you were, not send you shrieking to a retirement colony in horror."

"Dear, the last thing I feel when I look at you is horror."

She grins. He loves the look of her eyes when she smiles, how they shine. "You're the horniest old man I know."

"I'd better be the only horny old man filling your dance card."

"For now," she taunts.

"For good."

She taps her lower lip, considering. "I suppose I can make the sacrifice in the name of matrimony...for a while."

"And what if I said I could make it worth your while."

She laces her fingers together under chin. "You'd have to be very good."

Uninterested in further tinkering for the time being, the Doctor puts his sonic screwdriver into one of his coat pockets for safekeeping. "Haven't you heard? I'm the best."

River meets him halfway with a tantalizing kiss that heats his blood to lava. "That's a daring claim to make to the foremost expert on the Doctor. I think you'd better demonstrate."

He looses her hair from its tie and gathers River into his greedy loving embrace. "Just you wait."

* * *

He strokes the back of his fingers along the dips and curves of River's naked silhouette. He remembers being wild about triangles in one of his prior regeneration, but he knows now that no other shape will ever bewitch him like hers.

She follows his example, using touch to map his body in turn, beginning with the worn topography of his face. He lets the urge to recoil from her tender examination peter out. She's given him her hearts, he can give her the piece of himself his mortal friends might spurn had they any genuine concept of it: his antiquity.

"300?" he ventures, once more on the subject of age to fill the silence punctuated by their slowing pulse rates.

"I'm a time traveler, honey; even with my enhanced Time sense linear time is difficult to track, so I've only a vague idea how old I really am. But, in _this_ body, I know I'm getting up there. 300, 350 or thereabouts." She rests her head on her outstretched arm. "Sometimes I can see it, you know? My timeline going so long that it starts to loop back on itself. Isn't that strange?"

She traces whirls of intermingling circles from his gaunt cheeks to his recalcitrant chin. He tilts his head to let her carry forth down his throat. 'I do consent and gladly give' in Gallifreyan, over and over, her touch unrelenting and his skin untiring of the stimulus. The language that once raised empires and destroyed gods, and she uses it to say, in her roundabout way, that she loves him. _My River Song. My one in all of existence._ He interrupts her patter to kiss a sun-golden shoulder, to kiss that bump on the nose he so loves.

"Maybe it was her." He nods toward the dormant rotor. "She made you for me, so I'd have someone wonderful and irreplaceable to love. She wove herself into your DNA: child of the TARDIS. That's more than a notion, River. She exists everywhen, at all points in time simultaneously. What do you suppose that says about you?"

River's blue-green eyes flash with revelation. "Oh."

"Quite." He props his head on his hand to peer down at her. "You were never going to be ordinary. Maybe it's time you stopped expecting to be."

"I'm well aware that I'm not ordinary, sweetie." 'Ordinary,' it's clear to him she hears that word all wrong. She hears it and thinks he means 'human, normal', when all he means is 'like everyone else I've lost before.'

"But do you know how extraordinary you are?"

She stretches luxuriously. He spectates voraciously. "Are you going to be saccharine for the next 24 years," she questions, falsely curious and teasing him, the filed sharpness of her manicure waking his nerves as she scratches his side.

"The next hundred at least." He combs his fingers through her disheveled coils as they spill every which way. She purrs, catlike in repose. "All of it your influence, mind."

"I prefer to be a bad influence. I guess I'll have to work a little harder on you."

"You could never work hard enough to stop me going on."

He tumbles her onto her back, pressing her shoulder blades into the cotton wool nest of his greatcoat that cushions them from the glass floor. He touches his lips to every line age has left on her skin. To show he loves it regardless of whether he can speak the words. Her eyelids flutter when he kisses her crow's feet, once for each eye. He peppers grazing pecks along the depths of her laughter lines. She hums and offers her lips which he avoids but for the softest of contact. He'll get back to snogging her senseless; this is about something else.

She props herself up on her elbows while he makes his descent below neck level to the delicate skin of her breastbone. "What are you up to?"

"Looking for an inch of you I don't take a fancy to. It's going to take a while, dear, you might want to lie back down."

She flexes her tanned legs on either side of his hips. He's going to devour her by mouthfuls; good thing he's forever ravenous in this body. "Probably best," she says, "I shouldn't like to tire myself out."

"Oh no, you'll be needing all the strength you've got." He nips a love bite below her navel at a spot nobody else would notice is softer than it was when this body was new.

She bares her little weakness, gives him her all, because it was always River making the sacrifices and the Doctor feigning not to see. Not now, though. This life is for wide open eyes, loving the darkness spilling out and all the scars. The little bits of imperfection that make each other unique. The Doctor loves that River is the only River Song in all of time, and he's intends to show her.

"You'll have to be thorough," she advises. "For the sake of scientific study."

"Of course, dear. For the sake of scientific study. I'll be very...complete in my inspection." He kisses one hipbone and then the other. "A word to the wise from a very wise woman: You might want to find something to hold onto."

She laughs at his ridiculous idea of a chat-up line, that he stole from _her,_ and then moans very loudly at his not-so-ridiculous idea of other things. _Love the enthusiasm._

* * *

They both collapse onto his coat, overcome and sated. And him maybe a bit pleased with himself for making his stoic wife scream that much outside a battlefield. River rolls onto her stomach.

"Those space teeth of yours..."

"I didn't hear any complaints when I was running those space teeth over your cli-"

"It wasn't a complaint! My love, I am _not_ complaining. They're truly magnificent teeth. Truly." She taps his lips over said teeth, a nostalgic little smile on her face. He knows she loves _this_ about him, too.

"You're hot for my space teeth," he concludes rather smugly.

"I'm hot for your space everything, sweetie. Give me a moment to catch my breath and I'll prove it."

She cuddles up to his side, under his arm, and yawns. "Just a moment."

She's asleep in under a minute, her snores just soft enough to be inaudible.

He nods off shortly thereafter.

It's a Darillium miracle.

* * *

The Doctor sips the Kalvarissian tea his wife prepared for him after their impromptu nap. It's wrong, too sweet even by his standards (not Bowtie's though), but it's right because it's from her. Everything she does is a miracle in his eyes, the wrong things included. _Still. Probably best to hide all the sugar or I may end up with diabetes in this body._

"We've gone all this time thinking I was the archetype for what they created, but what about what she made you? There's no one in the universe quite the same as you."

River peers over her spectacles at him, considering his words. She doesn't even need glasses to see, she just likes the look of them. He likes the look of them.

 _Very sexy, that. Professor River Song. Oh, she is a professor, isn't she?_ Now that he isn't running away from River's title he's reminded how ridiculously alluring he finds her in professor mode, all cocky and wise and patronizing in a come hither sort of way. _A bit like me._

It takes him 0.2 nanoseconds to realize he's being smirked at.

"If you're done imagining me naked..."

"I wasn't!"

"You keep adjusting your necktie. You're thinking about using it to tie me to the railing." She sips her coffee as if she hasn't just buffeted his psychic shields with some incredibly exciting, incredibly sexy imagery that's going to follow him around for lifetimes.

He was _not_ thinking of her naked, by the way _._ He is now, however. He self-consciously adjusts said tie. He knows just the knots he'd use.

"As I was saying, if dear old Mum couldn't make me like you..."

The TARDIS exudes disapproval. River pouts.

"If she _chose_ not to make you like me," he rushes to emphasize. "She wouldn't make you anything less, River. Give her that much credit. She's only made herself one child, so why do you think she'd leave you only a single life to live if she couldn't make it last?"

River's giving the Old Girl a bit of a Look and getting a maternal hum in return.

"She always knew I'd give my lives away."

The Doctor rubs his hands up and down her bare arms.

"From the moment you were conceived, she saw your beginning and end, and probably most of the important events in between."

"The beginning was a gas," River opines acerbically, imbuing the words with a touch of dark humor he can appreciate.

"May your timey-wimey end also be." It won't be, but he can still wish the impossible for her, his mad and brilliant better half.

"I'll drink to that." She raises her coffee to meet his tea with a clink. He'll toast to her every day. Miraculous Melody Pond. His miracle. He doesn't celebrate the wonder of her enough, and he doesn't just mean the sex, though yes, miraculous would describe it very well. Quite the big bang. No, he means a party. River deserves a party to make up for every one she has so far been denied.

He claps. "You know what, this calls for dancing."

She looks at him skeptically, a slight he can't begin to deserve. He's a very elegant dancer, he'll have you know. More or less. He's improved, at the very least since Bandy Legs packed it in.

"Hey, I'm a dancer. I can dance."

River crosses her arms. "Can you? In _this_ body? Have you checked recently? You were all elbows and unfortunate rhythm last regeneration."

"I concentrated on gross motor skills this go 'round."

"And eyebrows?" She wiggles her own. He wags a finger in admonition.

"Was that sass? I won't be sassed, wife."

"Oh, but you will be, for years and years. You signed up for it."

"So I did."

She's very kissable when she sasses him. He shouldn't like it. It drives him wild.

* * *

When the Doctor makes a decision, he carries it through. He chose to find his glorious wife a glorious party to celebrate her glorious self, and so a party planet they've found. Elordo, a planet that doubles as the gin-soaked love child of Las Vegas and Rio de Janeiro during Carnival sits left of center in a solar system so far from Earth as to make it a terrible reference point, but here they are. River dresses to dance and bedevil. The Doctor dresses to keep up with her. (In retrospect, he should have worn his running shoes.)

They park the TARDIS on a sleeping corner of a festival tower composed entirely from the planet's native crystal ore. It's beautiful, transparent and glistening at over 250 levels. One can look straight up or down and get a dizzying, possibly obscene view. _How was I to know we'd parked beneath the nudist level?_ River ooh's a bit much for comfort and he's tempted to move their lovely timeship elsewhere lest River drag him into some mass bacchanalian orgy.

Thankfully, something loud and exciting draws her eyes and she drags him toward that instead. Everyone here is towering and rich in a relative sense and vague humanoid. They're also collectively fascinated by his hair. And River's hair. Particularly River's. ' _There's just so much of it,'_ he reads off an undirected psychic pulse from somebody with lime green skin and gold eyes and not a strand of hair on face or scalp. They're disconcertingly smooth. Were they being smooth farther away from his wife, he wouldn't be quite so bothered.

Just when the Doctor is considering scooting off to a dark corner to brood, things get interesting and not in the 'my wife's found another wife to marry at this party' sort of way he's grown accustomed to experiencing. Where there's smoke there's fire, andwhere there's a party, the Face of Bo is scarcely far behind.

The Doctor turns his back for five minutes to get them drinks and River's gone off to liberate an alien artifact from somebody's back pocket and Jack Harkness has shown up, teeth and guns blazing. _I can't take her anywhere without mayhem_. He should be more upset about this, he's sure.

Captain Jack presents himself for inspection at the punch bowl where the Doctor is attempting to be inconspicuous while scowling at the party-goers fawning over his wife. It takes some getting used to, not being the most interesting sentient being in the room.

"What's up, Doc? Who's the knockout?" Jack's appreciation of River's many fine attributes is obvious.

"My wife," he growls, daring Jack to cop to the slightest innuendo.

Jack slaps him on the back. "You settled down? Get out of town!"

"I'm _trying_ , you can trust me on that." He's waving an arm in the direction of the missus when her Alpha-Meson pistol makes an appearance from Rassilon knows where given the skimpiness of her dress. "Stun only, River!"

"Of course, my love. Killing them would be ever so rude...even if they'd deserve it." Some life form has put one of its many hands in a place it oughtn't have been and now it's one hand short. "I think some running might be in order, sweetie!" She grabs his hand and drags him out of the party that's quickly becoming a lynch mob. Why does he let her out?

They get as far as the nudist level-of course they do-before they have a chance to take a breather. Given the fact they're the only creatures with a stitch on as far as the eye can see, he doesn't like their chances of staying unobtrusive. All their pursuers will have to do is look _up._

"I think that's enough excitement for one night, don't you?" One night without being chased for dear life. One night. That's all he asks. Any more than that would bore him to tears, to be fair. The mayhem is half the fun of life with River Song.

River swears as she sits down on a self-cleaning park bench gives her foot a rub. Her heels are killer, a match for the woman who wears them. "And I was just starting to have fun."

"When you pulled out your gun?"

"You know the shooting's always my favorite part."

"A woman after my own heart."

Seeming to notice Jack's presence at last, River perks up even more. She does love to make a scene when she can. "And who do we have here?"

Jack flashes every tooth he has in grin and winks his hello. "How do you do, ma'am? Jack Harkness at your service." They exchange a coy handshake.

"Oh, we've met." She grins her sauciest grin; it would make a nymphomaniac demure. "Or we will."

"Something to look forward to." He beams at the Doctor. "Gotta love time travel."

"I do," River pipes up.

The Doctor grumbles, feeling ignored, "That's okay, don't mind me standing here. I'm only her husband."

River swats his shoulder, diverted. "There's nothing 'only' about being my husband, sweetie. Keep up." She turns to inspect the chattering mass of nudists populating this level of the crystal tower. "Now, now, what have we here?" There are shops and cafes and green space. Office buildings. A post office if the Doctor hasn't translated the sign wrong. It's the same as any other marketplace except nobody has on any clothes. The Doctor has seen it all, and would like to see remarkably less. He rubs his eyes. These mental images are going to linger awhile.

River spins back to face them, a dangerous glint coming into her eye. "You two stay here. I'm going to souvenir hunting."

"Don't you mean shopping?" Jack asks.

River's innocent look is unconvincing. "Do I?"

She's slipped away before either Jack or the Doctor can inquire further-score one for plausible deniability. A moment more and she probably could have convinced Jack to come along and carry her haul. Much like the Doctor, she has that effect on people. _Probably why we get along so well._ River Song remains too good to be true. _May ever she reign._

Jack stares at the crowded marketplace where River disappeared. He looks a little dazed and the Doctor pauses his brainstorming their escape route to check for traces of hallucinogenic lipstick. None.

"I like her," Jack finally says.

The Doctor scoffs. "Everybody likes her. You've seen her."

"Not as well as I'd like to." And there's the dirty inflection the Doctor's been awaiting. Jack's not Jack unless he's eyeing somebody up. The universe only makes sense that way.

"Captain, my captain, you do know how to pay a girl a compliment." River blows him a kiss, having appeared from nowhere bearing nothing the Doctor can see. He deeply, quietly seethes, and not for being kept waiting. This body lives on the verge of a hissy fit. It's the attack eyebrows, he's sure of it.

"Yes," River interjects before Jack can ask, "he does that a lot now."

"Sulks?"

"Goes all green-eyed with jealousy at the first sign of competition."

The Doctor grumbles petulantly, "My eyes are blue."

"Not right now, they aren't."

Jack chuckles. "Oh, man, she really has your number."

River shrugs. Her hair is ruffled in the shimmy and she's all over dazzling, a bluish-green-eyed cataclysm in a dress. His beautiful disaster. "I love him like a wife, not a fawning loyalist. The silly parts are just more of him to love."

"Lucky man."

"I aim to please," she croons, fluffing her hair.

"Don't I know it." His mood settles. This body is temperamental, these hearts shaky and unsure, but he loves her. Never doubt he loves her.

"Do you, sweetie? Do you really know?" She cups his cheek, peering intently up at him. None of his doubt has gone unnoticed. River Song is not to be underestimated, least of all by her dearly beloved husband. "You must know by now how much I love you. How little of your affection it takes to sustain me. I've seen you a stranger. I've seen you nearly _hate_ me. All while I loved you." Her eyes are clear as gemstones and the emotion within them more valuable besides.

"You shouldn't have been made to endure that."

She dismisses the platitude. "Should have, would have is not a game you and I play. We're more than that, _better_ than that."

She kisses him to seal the deal and he reciprocates with all the enthusiasm this body can wield while disregarding Jack's ensuing wolf whistles with the ease of long practice. The Doctor cannot envision a scenario where he leaves her in doubt of his affections again. Now that he's surrendered to his feelings for her, all bets are off. It's a gamble he's content to lose.

"Whatever's got you obsessing over your age, sweetie, let it go. Your face is perfect. All of your faces are. My Doctor is here." She lays her hands over his wildly thudding hearts. "You're my Doctor, every bit of you, and you are always _here_ to me."

"Time Lord wisdom?" His trampled hearts echo back his useless, empty farewell to his wife's future ghost.

She giggles. _Giggles_. His River. "No." She brushes his nose with hers. "It's called marriage, honey."

So it is.


End file.
